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The Cool of the Day 

The Breeze of the Evening 



The Cool of the Day 

The Breeze of the Evening 



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A. B. STORMS 



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Cincinnati: Jennings and Pye 
New York: Eaton and Mains 



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Copyright, igo2y ^ l'3> 
Jennings and Pye <^ ^D 



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Two Coptfe® ReoKivco 

OFC. 22 f9C5? 

OLAM ^XX«i No. 

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To MY Father, whose purity and gentleness, open- 

MINDEDNESS AND CHEER HAVE INSPIRED LIFE WITH 
RADIANT HOPEFULNESS FOR HIS CHILDREN, AND 
WHOSE QUIET DEPARTURE, AS THE LEAVES 
ARE FALLING THIS AUTUMN, MAKES IT 
A PRECIOUS PRIVILEGE TO LAY 
THIS FLOWER OF GRATITUDE 
UPON HIS NEW-MADE 
GRAVE, THIS LITTLE 
VOLUME IS DED- 
ICATED. 

The Author. 



Des Moines, Iowa, 

December, iqo2. 



My Foreword shall be a Prayer 

/^ LORD our God, give us clearness of vision 
that we may see the glory of Thy Presence 
in the world: attune our hearts that they may be 
responsive when swept by the breath of thy Holy 
Spirit: give us acuteness of hearing that when 
** The morning stars sing together,^'' and varied 
melody floats to us from bush and stream and sky 
we may not be as the stupid kine, but all alive to 
the good of life as children in their Father's 
house: m,ake us sweet of spirit and beautiful of 
life, and help us so to live that ^^ at evening-time 
it shall be light:' AMEN 



Contents 

Page 
The Cool of the Day, 1 1 

Browning's Christ, 20 

<<The Lord is My Shepherd,*' - - - - 42 

<*In Memoriam," SO 



The Cool of the Day 

The Breeze of the Evening 

** And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking 
in the garden in the cool of the day [*the breeze of the 
evening']." — Gen. iii, 8. 

" Thk groves were God's first temples/' 
The trees were not meant to hide us from 
God, but to cathedral us when we worship. 
Columned with such massive strength, 
frescoed with such contrasts of original 
pigments and blending of color, and fili- 
greed against the blue dome of the sky 
with such grace and freedom as makes 
the greatest achievements of the greatest 
artists and architects but clumsy and 
cramped imitation, here is room for the 
spirit to aspire and worship : here is room 
for God : here is freedom. 



12 The Cool of the Day 

The late President Beardshear, of the 
Iowa College of Agriculture and Mechanic 
Arts, used to go out of doors in the evening 
and stand or throw himself upon the grass 
and gaze long into the sky. These were 
his times of meditation and prayer. And 
when he came before his students in chapel, 
seldom with any w^ords of his own except 
in his earnest and strangely eloquent 
pra3^ers, but with some passage of Scripture 
and often with some selection from the 
poets or some great utterance in prose, they 
felt that they had somehow been made to 
stand for a little in the presence of God. 

Ever}^ day has its evening. There is a 
glory of the morning and a glory of the 
full-orbed day, and a glory of the midnight 
when the stars fill the sky. But the day 
would be imperfect without '^the breeze of 
the evening," 

**The gathered stillness multiplied, 
And made intense by sympathy. ' ' 



The Cool of the Day 13 

The birds, wearied by care and song, 
the flowers having lost the dew of the 
morning, and the trees, wait for the "breeze 
of the evening," the ''cool of the day." 

And God meant that life's weary days 
should have their evenings, that men should 
uncover their heads in '' the breeze of the 
evening" and take respite from labor to 
worship. God meant us to lift our eyes 
from our tasks and to spread our hands 
before him in prayer. Man alone can look 
upward, standing erect, and he alone can 
open his hands to God. '' Anthropos" the 
Greeks called man, the Perceiver, the Be- 
ing with a face. 

And men ought always to pray. There 
is a fault in our modern. Western life. It is 
feverish and full of haste. The very atmos- 
phere we are told is surcharged with elec- 
tricity. Such nervous energy was never 
seen before. The mingled blood of virile 
races, the marvelous march of progress, the 



14 The Cool of the Day 

inducements to enterprise, the intellectual 
alertness of the times, tempt men to prodig- 
ious expenditure. And the danger is that 
men forget God and forget to worship and 
forget that the weary days should have 
their evenings. 

Nerve-fag is a sin — the judgment for 
much sinning. If we did not take far bet- 
ter care of our bodies than our grandfathers 
and grandmothers did and lived at the 
^'pace that kills," we should mostly be 
nervous wrecks. But with all its intensity 
the average of life lengthens, for we take 
better care of ourselves. But we play too 
much on a few strings. We keep the ten- 
sion on the same nerves. When we play 
we play as we work, intensely. It would 
interest an Oriental to see us play. We go 
home from an evening's recreation by no 
means recreated, but fagged and feverish. 
We go sightseeing and rob the nights of 
sleep and the days of rest to see all we pos- 



The Cool of the Day iS 

sibly can. We are greedy. It is common 
to " do Europe " in a few weeks' vacation. 
We rush oflf to rest and come back more 
weary than when we left. We do not know 
how to rest. 

Have we remembered how kind God is 
in his thought for us about rest? The 
evening shuts the "lid of day" so gently 
as to woo us to rest. "The Sabbath was 
made for rest." The Jews in the times of 
persecution called the Sabbath "the prin- 
cess among the days." The Hebrew who 
had trodden with heavy burden many weary 
roads and met contumely, returned to his 
own house for the Sabbath and there was 
" a child of Abraham," and a " priest to his 
own household" on that day. "The prin- 
cess among the days ! " Elijah was not fit 
to hear the voice of God till he had rested 
and been refreshed " in the cool of the day." 
The disciples of John Baptist came to Christ 
after John had been beheaded in prison, 



i6 The Cool of the Day 

baffled, perplexed and sad, and Jesus said 
to them, ^'Come ye yourselves apart into a 
desert place and rest awhile." Jesus used 
to take two or three disciples and sometimes 
go alone in "the cool of the day,'' in "the 
breeze of the evening,'' out under the sky, 
up into a mountain, to pray. Once when 
Jesus was thus in prayer, and the disciples 
saw his face, they said, " Teach us how to 
pray," and he gave them the matchless 
prayer that ever bears his name, "The 
Lord's Prayer." Was there ever an utter- 
ance like the call of Jesus when he looked 
out upon the weary multitudes? "Come 
unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy 
laden, and I will give you rest." 

We should know how to rest in God, 
how to hear his voice "in the cool of the 
day," "the breeze of the evening," how to 
lift our spirits to him. There is no refresh- 
ment of mind or body like that which comes 
from resting the spirit in God. To relax 



The Cool of the Day 17 

utterly the tension of nerves, to let go life's 
tasks, to cease taking the initiative and to 
become receptive, to lose our egotism in 
sweet humility, that is rest. 

We are dull of hearing. How many 
times have you become suddenly aware of 
a thrush's song ! There is a line in Job 
that belongs to the few great lines of poetry 
that have ever been written — 

** When the morning stars sang together.'* 

But we are dull. We walk in the midst 
of oratorios and symphonies and hear them 
not. Who would miss the glory of an even- 
ing if he knew what he was missing? 

** There is sweet music here that softer falls 
Than petals of blown roses on the grass, 
Or night-dews on still waters between walls 
Of shadowy granite, in a gloaming pass ; 
Music that gentler on the spirit lies, 
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes." 

And there is rest for the spirit in God, 
Leave room for worship. Make place 



1 8 The Cool of the Day 

for God. Lift the ej^es. Hold your face 
to the skies. 

** Speak to Him, thou, for he hears; and spirit with 
Spirit can meet — 
Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than hands 
and feet. ' ' 

THE SONG OF THE PINES 

The pines rest clear against the sky, 

In the smnmer's day so long, 
Waiting the whispering winds to wake 

Their silence into song. 

The songs are weird and sweet and sad, 
In the soughing pines above my head, 

They mingle the sadness and gladness of men, 
The voice of the living, the voice of the dead. 

The piercing cries of those who sank 

In the blackness of night to the deep below ; 

The laughter that rang in the moon' s soft light ; 
All blend in the music's ebb and flow. 

'Tis the voice of man's life in its varied strains 
Of fierce and bitter, and joyous and sad. 

That sounds in the pines by the water' s edge ; 
Rises and falls, till the winds have sped. 



The Cool of the Day 19 

And then, in the hush of the evening hour, 
As in silence after song, 

In the glory of light, 

Like garments white. 

In the waves that sob, 

In the pulse's throb. 
Breathes the Spirit of God in silent power — 
To him all worlds belong. 

His the deep of the sky and the deep of the sea. 
His the waters, and his the land, 

I breathe a prayer 

On the quiet air. 

His Presence is near; 

I know he can hear : 
O God, my God, wilt thou cover me 
**In the shadow of thine hand?" 



Browning's Christ 

** I say the acknowledgment of God in Christ 
Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee 
All questions in the earth and out of it, 
And has so far advanced thee to be wise.'* 
— *<A Death in the Desert." 

** God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in 
the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, 
hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in his Son, 
whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also 
he made the worlds [ages]; who being the effulgence of 
his glory, and the very image of his substance, and uphold- 
ing all things by the word of his power, when he had 
made purification of sins, sat down on the right hand of 
the majesty on high ; having become by so much better 
than the angels, as he hath inherited a more excellent 
name than they." — Heb. i, i. 

You must read Browning two, three, 
four times. And then you will read him 
again, and some of his poems you will read 
many more times over. The first reading 



Browning's Christ 21 

is like finding 3'our way through a thicket. 
Points of compass are confused. You do 
not know the goal toward which the poet 
is leading 3'ou. Much of the beauty is at 
first obscured to your e3'es. But there are 
occasional bursts of sunshine. The glor3^ 
of da}^ shines about 3^ou. Here and there 
3"ou are made to listen to the silver murmur 
of the mountain stream that sings in the 
solitudes. The birds above your head 
break into chorus and the woods resound 
with jo3\ Xow and again wide landscapes 
open upon your ravished vision. There is 
wealth here, 3^ou are sure of that, even at 
first reading. 

But when 3^ou get 3^our bearings — get to 
know the spirit of Browning — feel his pulse- 
beat and catch his enthusiasm, when his 
own tremendous optimism has seized }"ou 
and carried 3^ou along as on some mighty 
tide that sets in through the narrows 
towards the base of the mountains, when 



22 The Cool of the Day 

you catch the import of those clarion blasts 
that ring out on the air like a hunter's 
song, and are clear and triumphant as an 
apostle's sermon or letter, you realize that 
here is a master spirit who commands you 
for great faith and far vision, and whose 
heart beats true to the beat of God's heart ; 
who does not flinch in the face of the 
toughest problems set men to solve here in 
this life, and who steadfastly believes they 
must be solved in the light of the wisdom 
and goodness of God, and of man as God's 
child. 

The greatness of Browning is in the 
greatness of his convictions, his range of 
vision, the genuineness and breadth of his 
sympathies, his utter sincerity. He is no 
mere singer of sweet sentences, charmed 
by the music of his own song. He has a 
prophet-like grandeur and earnestness. He 
stands like Isaiah among the prophets. 



Browning's Christ 23 

And a man can not face life with prophet- 
like earnestness and utter words of sin- 
cerity and power without a prophet's con- 
victions. 

Browning found in Christ, the Son of 
God, "accepted by the reason," the Solver 
*'of all questions in the earth and out of it.'* 

It is interesting and important to note 
how Browning came to this unfaltering, 
positive belief in Christ. Fuller and more 
comprehensive and uncompromising belief 
in Christ as the Divine Son of God, the 
'* express image of the Father," we need 
not hope to find anywhere. But he came 
to this belief not through dogmatic chan- 
nels, but through an appreciation of the 
divine helpfulness and utility of Christ. 
It is because Christ is worth so much that 
he calls him lyord. It is because in this 
world of light and shadow, of struggle and 
conflict, of suffering and gladness, of deep 



24 The Cool of the Day 

questioning and partial answer, he finds 
Christ to be our heavenly Guide, that he 
gives him the utmost reverence and love. 
In the "Christmas Eve " we are intro- 
duced into a little dissenting chapel, where 
the poet has taken refuge from a storm, 
on the edge of a no7idescript community 
in the cit3^ We are made to feel the 
'^stuffiness" and narrowness of it all from 
the ** two-b^'-four " entr^^-wa^^ with its creak- 
ing door and tallow candle to the dogmatic 
ignorance of the preacher within. We 
watch, through the poet's fastidious eyes, 
as the people assemble. The man w4th a 
great wen on his face comes in; the con- 
sumptive mother with a babe; the ''shoe- 
maker's lad, with wizened face in want of 
soap, and wet apron wound around his 
waist like a rope;" the fat woman with 
a "wreck of whalebones" for umbrella, 
until we feel like saying, "Faugh!" But 



Browning's Christ 25 

the thing that weighs upon him most is 
**the pig-of-lead-like pressure of the preach- 
ing-man's immense stupidity.'' 

Then he throws himself out into the 
night, feeling as though he had ''slipt a 
fetter." A landscape, like Carot would 
paint, is sketched for us in words that are 
full of subtle suggestion : the flying clouds 
that break from the moon's face and a 
moon rainbow, the moss-path up the hill, 
and we, like the poet, *'feel better," for 
'*this outside" is *'so pure and different." 

And then he is overwhelmed by a reve- 
lation of the presence of Christ — 

**A11 at once I looked up with terror; 
He was there, 
He himself, with his human air." 

And it flashes upon him that Christ, too, 
was in the chapel; that these worshipers 
loved him; and that he did not despise 
their worship or their love. And then, as 



26 The Cool of the Day 

he reasons about it, the face of Christ turns 
full upon him, and he says: 

**I spread myself beneath it, 
As when the bleacher spreads, to seethe it 
In the cleansing sun, his wool, — 
Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness 
Some defiled, discolored web — 
So lay I, satm-ate with brightness." 

So he comes upon broader truth: 

' * So he said, so it befalls. 

God, who registers the cup 
Of mere cold water, for his sake 

To a disciple rendered up, 
Disdains not his own thirst to slake 
At the poorest love was ever offered: 
And because my heart I proffered. 
With true love trembling at the brim, 
He suffers me to follow him 

Forever, my own way." 

And now we are transported to Rome, 
to the pomp and ceremony of Catholic rit- 
ual in St. Peter^s at Christmas Eve servdces. 
Here, too, he finds that Christ has place in 
the hearts of those who love him. 

"Love" is " the starthng thing, the new ; 
Love was the all-sufficient, too." 



Browning's Christ 27 

And now he is transported again, this 
time to the seat of rationalism, a German 
university. It is the time of the Christmas 
Eve discourse by a learned professor. An 
expectant audience of kindred spirits have 
gathered and listen with deepest interest 
while the professor proposes * 'inquiring first 

Into the various sources whence 

This Myth of Christ is derivable ; ^ 

Demanding from the evidence 

(Since plainly no such life was livable) 

How these phenomena should class ? 

Whether *t were best opine Christ was, 

Or never was at all, or whether 

He was and was not, both together — 

It matters little for the name. 

So the idea be left the same.'' 

Here, too, he finds that underneath all 
the superficial profundity and learning of 
the university are men with souls and the 
power of love. 

But he is left in a ** genial, tolerant 
mood," and wonders after all if there must 
be only one way, one best way, of love and 



28 The Cool of the Day 

worship. In this lethargy of spirit the 
Christ almost escapes him. He is sum- 
moned again to strenuous assertion of his 
own personality. 

And back in the little chapel he finds 
himself again. He has nodded during the 
sermon and has had visions and dreams. 
But the lesson of it all will never leave 
him. It is not the cup but the water that 
quenches thirst. 

*< Better have knelt at the poorest stream 

That trickles in pain from the straitest rift ! 
For the less or more is all God' s gift, 
Who blocks up or breaks wide the granite seam.*' 

In this poem, as in all true art, divinity 
is shadowed forth in suggestion. It is in 
the glory of the presence of the Son of God 
and in the folds of his garments that these 
truths of life and love burn down upon the 
soul. 

In the midst of the poem he develops an 
argument, earnest and strong and convinc- 
ing, that Christ is not to be looked upon as 



Browning's Christ 29 

a mere man, better and wiser than other 
men. His words are not to be received as 
raexg^ maxims and moral instruction. He 
speaks with authority. We do not need to 
be told what right and duty are, but we 
need the power to do both, and this power 
comes from God through Christ to the life 
of men : 

<*And thence I conclude that the real God-function 
Is to furnish a motive and injunction 
For practicing what we know already. 

And such an injunction and such a motive 
As the God in Christ, do you wave, and 'heady,' 

'High-handed,' hang your tablet votive 
Outside the fane on a finger-post ? 
Morality to the uttermost. 
Supreme in Christ, as we all confess, 

Why need we prove would avail one jot 

To make him God, if God he were not? 
What is the point where himself lays stress ? 
Does his precept run, * Believe in good, 
In justice, truth, now understood 

For the first time ?' or, ' Believe in me. 
Am Lord of Life?' Whosoever can take 
The same to his heart and for mere love' s sake 

Conceive of the love, — that man obtains 
A new truth.'* 



Browning's Christ 

Continued 

In his "Easter-day," Browning starts 
with the exclamation: ''How very hard it 
is to be a Christian!" Not merely the 
making real our duty up to our ideal — that 
is, of course, always hard. But hard to do 
the duty — 

**But hard I mean, for me and you 
To realize it, more or less, 
With even the moderate success 
Wliich commonly repays our strife 
To carry out the aims of Ufe." 

Now the aim of the Christian life is 
greater and more arduous than any other. 
And this is our experience that the fruits 
of more arduous eflFort are worth the greater 
cost. So of Christian character. 
30 



Browning's Christ 31 

But that is not where the perplexity 
lies. The difficulty of being a Christian 
is that of rightly understanding what the 
goal of life's endeavor really is. Our con- 
ception of life's good changes — 

<*We do not see it where it is, 
At the beginning of the race ; 
As we proceed, it shifts its place. 
And where we looked for crowns to fall, 
We find the tug's to come — that's all.*' 

He then takes up the difficulty of believ- 
ing. If everything were only plain and clear 
and unmistakable — why it were easy to be- 
lieve. If we knew exactly what God's 
command is, we could but obey it. But 
we must feel after the truth, ''that decep- 
tive speck." And then there must be 
*' some uncertainty with faith if you would 
have faith be" at all. 

And now he sets the soul on its quest 
for truth and God and the good of life. 
There is first and most obvious the good of 
this sensuous world, this wondrous, beauti- 



32 The Cool of the Day 

ful world. But the restless intellect, the 
hungry heart, can not, after all, rest here. 
Then there is the good of art. How good 
to create, to follow the ideal! But this 
is only a partial good. The good of knowl- 
edge also, of ranging in the intellectual 
universe, and ever making new conquests. 
But this is only partial good. In his 
** Easter-day " vision he stands as at the 
final judgment making choice of the seem- 
ing final good of life, of the sensuous world, 
of art, of knowledge. But the last and 
highest choice is love, love made possible, 
evident, overwhelming in Christ, God's gift 
to the world. 

But the deepest secret of love is not 
what he had thought, satiety; for the 
soul of man there is no final goal. There 
is no rest that is not at the same time spir- 
itual death. There must be forever prog- 
gress, there must be ever new awakenings. 
Every stage of life is but the chrysalis of 



Browning's Christ 33 

larger, richer, truer, higher life. There is 
no final heaven — 

*< Thou love of God! or let me die, 
Or grant what shall seera heaven almost ! , . • 
Be all the earth a wilderness ! 
Only let me go on, go on, 
Still hoping ever and anon 
To reach one eve the Better Land. 
. . . And so I live you see, 
Go through the world, try, prove, reject, 
Prefer, still struggling to effect 
My warfare; happy that I can 
Be crossed and thwarted as a man. 
Not left in God' s contempt apart. 
With ghastly smooth life, dead at heart. 

Thank God, . . . 

Thank God, no paradise stands barred 

To entry, and I find it hard 

To be a Christian, as I said. 

But Easter-day breaks, but 
Christ rises ! Mercy every way 
Is infinite." 

In ''An Epistle; or, the Strange Medical 
Experience of Karshish, an Arab Physi- 
cian,'' the poet transports us to the atmos- 
phere of Palestine just after the cruci- 

3 



34 The Cool of the Day 

fixion. Karshish is writing to Abib, his 
medical teacher, about various things he 
has discovered there in Asia relative to 
their common art, about certain herbs and 
subtle poisons and medicines. The real 
burden of his mind, which he tries to make 
light of, as though he thought it a mere 
idle tale, is the strange experience he has 
had in meeting a man named I^azarus, who 
declared he had been raised from the dead 
by one Christus, a Nazarene physician. 
He declares Lazarus a *' madman.** Yet, 
somehow, he can not throw off the deep 
awe and peculiar interest of the story — 

*' Nor I myself discern in what is writ 
Good cause for the peculiar interest, 
And awe indeed this man has touched me with." 

But, after he has closed his letter, he re- 
curs again to this strange story, and throws 
in, as a kind of postscript, one of the most 
beautiful and impressive expressions of the 
meaning of Christ's death and resurrection, 



Browning's Christ 35 

of Christ's heavenly message to the world 
that has ever found expression. He apol- 
ogizes for the time he has wasted in telling 
Abib about all this, and bids him affection- 
ate farewell. Then the postscript is added 
mth wonderful feeling and power — 

" The very God ! think Abib ; dost thou think? 
So the All-Great were the All-Loving, too — 
So, through the thunder comes a human voice 
Saying, * O heart I made, a heart beats here ! 
Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself ! 
Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine, 
But love I gave thee, with myself to love. 
And thou must love me who have died for thee 1* 
The madman saith He said so : it is strange." 

''The Death in the Desert " represents 
John of Patmos dying. The scene is laid 
in a deep cave whither some disciples have 
carried John to escape the espionage of the 
imperial police. It is the time of the pre- 
secution of the Christians. 

The poem was written at the time of the 
controversy concerning the historical verac- 
ity of the Gospels, and the writings of 



36 The Cool of the Day 

Strauss and Renan were attracting wide 
attention. 

Browning makes John foresee the very 
skepticisms that would arise in the future 
years and puts into John's own mouth their 
refutation. He makes John answer Strauss 
and Renan and the skeptical temper, and 
thus takes up the question of Christ's na- 
ture, life, doctrine, the miracles. '^ It is the 
only composition in which Browning deals 
directly with historical Christianity ; and its 
main purpose may, in brief, be said to be to 
set forth the absoluteness of Christianity, 
which can not be affected by any assaults 
made upon its externals." ''It is first of 
all," says Corson, '' a religion whose foun- 
tain head is a personality, Jesus Christ, in 
whom all that is spiritually potential in 
man, was realized, and in responding to 
whom the soul of man is quickened and 
regenerated. And the Church, through the 



Browning's Christ 37 

centuries, has been kept alive, not by the 
letter of the New Testament, for the letter 
killeth, but by a succession of quickened 
and regenerated spirits, *The noble living 
and the noble dead,' through whom Christ 
has been awakened and developed in other 
souls.'' 

John is lying half conscious and very 
weak in the midst of the cave, when one 
of those kneeling by his side, 

** Stung by the splendor of a sudden thought,*' 

hastens and gets a leaden leaf of the Gos- 
pel John had writ and presses the apostle's 
finger on the words, ** I am the resurrection 
and the life." 

It is the picture of a beautiful death. 

And the poet works out with the deepest 
feeling and earnestness his own conception 
of the worth of faith and the place of 
Christ. Christ made those who saw and 



38 



The Cool of the Day 



knew kim, as Jolin had done, realize the 
presence of God. But he says : 

^* God is here : I apprehend nought else. 
Is not God now i" the world his power first made? 
Is not his love at issue still with sin? 
Visibly when a wrong is done on earth, 
Love, wrong, and pain, what see I else around?" 

iVnd then he makes John say, what is 
the burden of Browning's own soul, that 
the learning how to love is the great lesson 
of life— 

*• For hfe, with all it fields of joy and woe, 
And hope and fear, — ^believe thy aged friend — 
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love, 
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is ; 

And that we hold henceforth to the uttermost 

Such prize despite the envy of the world, 

And having gained tmth, keep truth : that is all.'* 

And to lead men to see this divine truth 
is the purpose of the incarnation in Christ — 

*' If Christ, as thou aSirmest, be of men 

Mere man. the first and best, but nothing more, — 
Account him, for reward of what he was, 
Now and forever, wretchedest of all. 



Browning's Christ 39 

For see : himself conceived of life as love, 
Conceived of love as v^rhat must enter in, 
Fill up, make one with his each soul he loved ; 
Thus much for men's joy, all men's joy for him.*' 

But, the argument continues, there are 
rising hundreds and thousands every gen- 
eration who look to Christ, and by his 
words and Spirit expect him to be their 
Savior and Friend, '' Groom for each bride.'' 
What a divi7ie hunger Christ has awakened 
in men's souls ! What expectation ! But if 
he be but a man, though the chief est and 
best, he must be accounted most wretched 
because of his impotency — 

'^ Can a mere man do this ? 
Yet Christ saith, this he lived to do. 
Call Christ, then, the illimitable God, 
Or lost." 

Browning thought personality the su- 
preme fact, and the ministry of personality 
to personality the supreme and vital thing 
in religion. We catch some conception of 
this truth in the relation which one person 



40 The Cool of the Day 

may have to another, inspirational, life-giv- 
ing. This which is the deepest and most 
precious truth of human society carried up 
to the realm of religion becomes the open 
secret of Christianity. 

This is the splendid thought of Brown- 
ing's ^^Saul:'* 

'*0, our manhood's prime vigor ! No spirit feels waste, 

Not a muscle is stopped in its playing, nor sinew un- 
braced. 

O, the wild joys of Hving ! the leaping from rock up to 
rock, 

The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool 
silver shock 

Of the plunge in the pool' s living water, . . . 

How good is man' s life, the mere living ! how fit to em- 
ploy 

All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy ! 

'"Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for! my flesh, 
that I seek 

In the Godhead ! I seek and I find it ! O Saul, it shall be 

A face like to my face that receives thee; a man like to 
me. 

Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever; a hand like 
to this hand 

Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee ! See the 
Christ stand!" 



Browning's Christ 41 

I DREAM OF THE SEA 

**I dream of the sea, I dream of the sea. 
Its swishing waves make music for me, 
Its pulsing waters beat in my blood. 
My heart knows the movement of neap-tide 
and flood. 

Its mist-veiled horizons challenge me 
To belief in God and eternity : 
My spirit grows bold in the ambient air ; 
O'er the heaving billows I lift up a prayer. 

Far from dust of the street and prattle of men, 
I read here the Scripture not written with pen : 
* Deep calleth to deep ' in the mystery 
Of the sky and the soul and the sea. ' ' 



^^The Lord is My Shepherd" 

Psalm XXIII 

Progress is a ruthless iconoclast. It 
has uprooted and torn awa}^ many a fine, 
old, homely custom, around which the 
heartstrings were twined, and macadam, 
ized man}^ an old-fashioned flower-garden. 
Progress does not stop to count the tendrils 
of sentiment that are ripped up by her 
steel plowshares, nor to ask whether the 
results are to be more love and more happi- 
ness or less. Progress is an iron steed 
with electric nerv^es, and never weary. 
Progress casts up a highway and a way. 
What though the soil be full of withered 
rootlets and dead flowers ; science and com- 
merce must not be sta3^ed for these. Prog- 
ress must have right of way. 
42 



The Lord is My Shepherd 43 

In the old days man and beast were 
companions. The shepherd *'knew his 
sheep by name.'* They dwelt together, 
the shepherd and his sheep, under the open 
skies, and were sheltered by the same roof 
or rock. When one of the flock was 
sacrificed for food it was a solemn and 
tender thing. There was a distinct sense 
of loss. The shepherd counted his flock, 
and knew for many days that one was 
missing. 

But now ! We herd our cattle and our 
sheep. They look piteously into the faces 
of men, but there is no sympathy. We 
have great slaughter pens, where iron 
hooks grapple their helpless victims and 
hang them before the quick knife has 
pierced the arteries ; and, with incredible 
swiftness, they are slain and dressed and 
packed for the markets of a thousand cities. 
The old way made death a sacrament, the 
new makes it slaughter. And the ines- 



44 The Cool of the Day 

timable loss is in the transformation of the 
shepherd into a hireling and a butcher. 

And so we lose the beauty and power of 
one of the most beautiful of Scripture 
images, the picture of the shepherd. 

Man casts all his later thought into the 
imagery of his youth. In the twenty-third 
Psalm, David has treasured beautiful pic- 
tures of the green pastures and the still 
waters of his shepherd-youth. And the 
rich experience of his later life naturally 
expresses itself in the shepherd symbolism. 
** The Lord is my shepherd'' 

This is one of the oldest utterances in 
comparative religion of which we have any 
record. It expresses David's appreciation 
of the infinite worth of his religion, the 
value to his soul of the knowledge of God 
which his religion has brought to him. It 
is the utterance of a buoyant confidence in 
God which we call faith. 

And a finer, nobler thing was never 



The Lord is My Shepherd 45 

visioned in tlie depths of the soul of man, 
nor sung by human tongue to the accom- 
paniment of the inner harpstrings of love 
and hope than this shepherd song of David. 
Critics have raised the question whether 
David was the author of this psalm. I 
think the stamp of his personality is upon 
it. Perhaps some other might have sung 
it, but we know of no other who could. 
But whether David sang it or not, it is the 
voice of faith, the utterance of the soul of 
man in its high boast that the Lord God 
is the Shepherd of life. 

This means a deep, firm, and purposeful 
trust in God ; a determined trust that God 
is good ; an everlasting trust of life to him ; 
for, in all the great relations of life, we 
may not merely drift by chance. The 
whole power of personality must be thrown 
into these greatest things. Faith is not 
inert, phlegmatic, sodden. It is high spir- 
itual action. It is self-assertion. A man 



46 The Cool of the Day 

must put his will and reason and heart into 
his faith. If religion demanded less, it 
would be of little worth. We owe it to 
our own souls and to our God to ''seek him 
with the whole heart," and not wait for 
some m^^stical movement upon our spirits 
from some unseen source to make us men 
of faith. It is our highest dut^^to believe." 

It is not a matter of mere external evi- 
dences. Faith reaches much deeper than 
that. You might if you merely hunted 
evidences that God is good, and that his 
providence is over life, find many that seem 
to indicate the contrar3^ Our range of 
vision and our insight are so limited and im- 
perfect that we can not judge by mere 
externals. Faith is something infinitely 
solider and deeper than such poor logic 
could establish. 

No, that sublime self-assertion of the 
soul in trusting God, and which we call 
faith, is the highest expression of person- 



The Lord is My Shepherd 47 

ality. We can not settle the basis of char- 
acter on the poor, shifting sands of logical 
inferences. 

Here alone we find security and peace. 
The discipline of life is sometimes severe, 
but 

*' Since thy Father's arm sustains thee, 

Peaceful be ; 
When a chastening hand retains thee, 

It is he. 
Know his love in full completeness 
Fills the measure of thy weakness ; 
If they wound thy spirit sore. 

Trust him more." 

But such ''belief or ''trust" involves 
utter integrity of purpose to do the will of 
God. We have no right to luxuriate in 
religious emotions and not make the ulti- 
mate surrender which lets his searching 
light into the innermost life of thought 
and impulse. Religious emotions are spu- 
rious otherwise. The hectic flush may look 
like the bloom of health, but it is the symp- 
tom of disease. There must be no with- 



48 The Cool of the Day 

holding or blurring or evasion. '^Search 
me, O God, and know my heart; try me 
and know my thoughts, and see if there be 
any wicked way in me, and lead me in the 
way everlasting.'' 

Then I can say, with profound humility, 
but with a confidence that can not be 
shaken, '*He leadeth me in the paths of 
righteousness for his name's sake." 

Only thus can religious emotion be 
valid. But with this thoroughness and 
sincerity the soul may know the deep- 
est, divinest joy. ''Thou preparest a table 
before me in the presence of mine enemies. 
Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup 
runneth over." 

The Oriental breaks a cruse of anoint- 
ing oil upon the head of his guest as they 
meet at the door. But "my Shepherd" 
anoints my soul *'with the Holy Ghost." 
The Oriental shepherd had faithful dogs 
which followed his flock as he led them on, 



The Lord is My Shepherd 49 

to keep them in the path and from stray- 
ing. " Surely goodness and mercy shall 
follow me all the days of my life/' 

The shepherd and his flock dwelt under 
the stars. They lived out-of-doors, but it 
was God's house. The breath of God had 
swept the soul of David, the shepherd-boy, 
in many a still night. And now, out of the 
great beliefs, the great trusts, the great 
loves, and the great deeds of the soul, God 
builds a '* temple not made with hands, 
eternal." 

Heine, satirist and cynic, was awed upon 
entering the cathedral of Amiens, and ex- 
claimed: '' Behold what convictions can do! 
Opinions do not build like this.'' So we 
say of this temple of the soul, opinions do 
not build like this, only convictions, ulti- 
mate convictions, that reach to the bed- 
rock of character are sufficient. 

'' I shall dwell in the house of God for- 
ever." 

4 



^^In Memoriam" 

Voltaire has said that ''no nation has 
treated in poetty moral ideas with more 
energ3^ and depth than the English nation." 
*^ Energy- and depth," seriousness and sin- 
cerity, are leading characteristics of Tenny- 
son's '^ In Memoriam." You can not read 
it in a careless or indifferent mood. Ten- 
nyson is seldom a mere whiler away of an 
idle hour, and least of all here. *' In j\Ie- 
moriam " is the record, written in tears 
and blood, of a soul's quest for certitude 
concerning God and freedom and immor- 
talit3'. These deepest problems of life 
were thrust upon Tennyson with sharpest 
accent by his own great sorrow in the 

death of Arthur Hallam, a beloved friend, 
50 



In Memoriam 51 

devScribed by those vv^ho knew him, and 
especially by Tenn3^son's lines, as a young 
man of brilliant mind and beautiful char- 
acter. Tennyson's sister Emily was 
betrothed to Hallam and Tennyson him- 
self loved him with that rare and beautiful 
love of man for man ** passing the love of 
women/' Hallam was snatched from them 
by fever while traveling on the Continent, 
and was brought back to England and 
buried in Clevedon, Somersetshire, over- 
looking the sea. It must have been here 
that Tennyson wrote the little poem that 
lives in our hearts. 

*< Break, break, break, 

On thy cold gray stones, O sea ! 
And I would that my tongue could utter 
The thoughts that arise in me. 

O well for the fisherman's boy. 

That he shouts with his sister at play ! 

O well for the sailor lad. 

That he sings in his boat on the bay. 



52 The Cool of the Day 

And the stately ships go on 

To their haven under the hill ; 
But O for the touch of a vanished hand, 

And the sound of a voice that is still ! 

Break, break, break, 

At the foot of thy crags, O sea ! 

But the tender grace of a day that is dead 
Will never come back to me." 

If we were attempting a literary instead 
of a devotional study of " In Memoriam" 
we would not fail to notice the local color- 
ing of Tennyson's poetr^'. It is thoroughly 
English, rich in natural imagery. Few 
poets even have such artist's eyes as Ten- 
nyson. His spiritual ideas are clothed in 
as rich and varied foliage as the autumn 
woods. Take for example his 

* * Xow rings the woodland loud and long. 
The distance takes a loveher hue. 
And, drowned in yonder living blue, 

The lark becomes a sighdess song." 

It happens here, as in some other great 
literature, that a personal bereavement 



In Memoriam 53 

accentuates the everlasting problems of 
human sorrow. In the '* Ancient Sage," 
Tennyson says: 

* ' My son, the earth is dark with grief and graves, 
So dark that men cry out against the heavens.'* 

Yet he adds — 

** We can not give up the mighty hopes 
That make us men." 

These "mighty hopes" are belief in God, 
and in freedom, and in immortality. 

And yet Tennyson is no mere tradition- 
alist. There was a time in his youth 
when he rested in a merely traditional 
faith. He dealt with life's problems too 
easily. A great personal bereavement 
shocked him out of a naive, traditional 
belief and led him to face the deepest 
questions and doubts of his soul with 
absolute sincerity. This is the sort of 
doubt of which he speaks when he says 

' * There Hves more faith in honest doubt, 
Beheve me, than in half the creeds." 



54 The Cooi of the Day 

He himself declares his soul struggle to 
have been '' a fight with death.'' 

Yet Tennyson is never morbid. Mor- 
bidness, the mark of weakness and selfish- 
ness, you will never 'find in Tenn3'Son's 
verse. He is always royally wholesome. 
Like the hero of Browning, he 

• • Never turned bis back, but marcheQ breast forward, 
-V ever doubted clouds would break. 
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong 

would triumph. 
Held we fall to rise, are baffied to fight better. 
Sleep to wake.^' 

The sunlight smites his face. And it is a 
grand face. His portrait is the noblest 
adornment for a librar}'. We must sa3' of 
him as he did of Dante, when Carlyle 
asked him once as the^^ were looking at 
portraits of Dante and Goethe in a shop 
window, *' What do you see in the face of 
Dante that is not also in the face of 
Goethe?" ''The divine," answered Ten- 
nvson. 



In Memoriam 55 

Browning is characterized by audacity, 
Tennyson by reserve. But Tennyson is 
no less courageous than Browning. 

We must place '^ In Memoriam" in a 
clasp of '^Paradison/' and ''Inferno," and 
with Job. While the everlasting problem 
is the same out of which grew that which 
was greatest in the Greek drama, "In 
Memoriam" is incomparably greater be- 
cause this problem is faced in the light of 
the revelation of the character of God in 
the Old Testament, and in Jesus Christ in 
the New. 

Perhaps the leading characteristic of '' In 
Memoriam" is intellectuality. There is 
firmness of fiber. No line or syllable is 
weak. There is nowhere anything that 
could be characterized as sentimentalism. 
Tennyson holds himself and his problem 
in the grip of a great intellect. 

And there is no conceit, or pride, or 
priggishness, or posing. He is far too sin- 



56 The Cool of the Day 

cere for that, and the problem too real and 
pressing. 

And for the same reason he does not 
lighth' discard traditional beliefs. He can 
not rest in a merely naive, traditional 
faith ; but he does not despise or disesteem 
traditional faith. He searches and ques- 
tions, that he may find truth, or at least 
certitude and peace. So he argues concern- 
ing his doubts — 

*' You say, but with no touch of scorn, 

Sweet-hearted, you whose light blue eyes 
Are tender over drowning flies, 
You tell me, doubt is devil-bom. 

I know not : one indeed I knew, 
In many a subtle question versed. 
Who touched a jarring lyre at first, 

But ever strove to make it true. 

Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds. 

At last he beat his music out. 

There hves more faith in honest doubt, 
Believe me, than in half the creeds. 



In Memoriam 57 

He fought his doubts and gather' d strength ; 

He would not make his judgment bhnd ; 

He faced the specters of the mind 
And laid them : thus he came at length 

To find a stronger faith his own ; 

And power was with him in the night, 
Which makes the darkness and the light, 

And dwells not in the light alone." 

Tennyson is one of those rare represent- 
ative spirits that feels himself thrust into 
the presence of those deep problems that 
concern all men, but which few can make 
much headway in solving. These few 
choice spirits are high priests of humanity. 
They ''beat their music out" in such soul- 
solitude as Jesus knew, but when they have 
found peace their victory is ours and all 
men's. ''This is the victory that over- 
cometh the world, even our faith.'' 

Now the "world" of Tennyson's day, 
that was there, very real and tangible and 
even brutal, to be " overcome," was the un- 



58 The Cool of the Day 

belief that sprang from the prevalent phi- 
losophy, and from the imperious material- 
ism of his age. Materialistic evolution was 
arrogantly brow-beating spiritual faith. 
Men were confidently saying, in the name 
and by the authority of science, that knowl- 
edge and certitude are limited to the mate- 
rial and to the method of materialistic 
science. Here alone are the tests of real- 
ity. If God and the soul are to occupy 
respectable place as realities along with 
sticks and stones and things^ let them meet 
the scientific tests. 

The trouble with this philosophy is that 
it fails to account for personality. Tenny- 
son is the prophet of his age in his tremen- 
dous assertion of the fact of spirit and per- 
sonality — 

** . . . In wrath the heart 
Stood up and answer' d, * I have felt. ' ' ' 

But he faces fairly and sincerely the 
doubts of his age. It does seem, indeed, 



In Memoriam 59 

that nature is careless of the individual, and 
even of the type. Nature is ''red in tooth 
and claw/' and the very cliffs cemeteries of 
countless dead. Is it not mere conceit in 
man to think himself nature's favorite, or 
God's, that he should escape the universal 
reign of destruction? (See 1.111, 1.IV, lv.) 

He comes back to the old truths that lie 
as foundation stones underneath the Scrip- 
tures, the worth of the soul and the mof'al 
character of God, He once declared, in 
great vehemence, that ''only as one bathed 
his sword in heaven could he meet the in- 
tellectual cynicism, the sloth of will, the 
utilitarian materialism of a transition age." 

His feeling about the immortality of love, 
and the purifying power of love upon the 
heart and life, is a part of the moral argu- 
ment. He lets his imagination dwell upon 
the probable career in immortal freedom of 
such a spirit as that of his friend. He al- 
most dreads that his friend may outstrip 



6o The Cool of the Day 

him, and be so far beyond him that their 
friendship and companionship in the im- 
mortal life beyond the grave will be broken 
and impossible of continuance. But the 
thought of his friend's love for him purifies 
his own heart while he lingers within "the 
bourne of time and place." 

*' Do we indeed desire the dead 

Should still be near us at our side ? 
Is there no baseness we would hide ? 
No inner vileness that we dread ? 

Should he for whose applause I strove, 
I had such reverence for his blame, 
See wdth clear eye some hidden shame, 

And I be lessen' d in his love ? 

I wrong the grave with fears untrue ; 

Shall love be blam' d for want of faith ? 

There will be wisdom with great death, 
The dead shall look me thro' and thro'. 

Be near us when we climb or fall : 
Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours 
With larger other eyes than ours, 

To make allowance for us all." 



In Memoriam 6i 

Tennyson felt that dogma and creed 
were not the final or best expression of 
faith. When people wrote asking his 
belief concerning Christ he would say, 
*' Answer that I have given my belief in 
* In Memoriam/ " 

A week before his death, Tennyson 
spent much time with his son conversing 
upon the high themes that had engaged 
his thought throughout his life, chiefly of 
immortality. He expressed his feeling 
about death in these lines 

** Biers should be not black, but white, 

With songs in praise of death, and crown' d with 
flowers." 

** In Memoriam "was completed at the 
age of forty, having been seventeen years 
in composition. At eighty years of age 
Tennyson wrote '* Crossing the Bar." 

** Sunset and evening star. 

And one clear call for me ! 



62 The Cool of the Day 

And may there be no moaning of the bar, 
When I put out to sea. 

But such a tide as moving seems asleep, 

Too full for sound and foam, 
When that which drew from out the boundless 
deep 

Turns again home, 

Twilight and evening bell, 

And after that the dark ! 
And may there be no sadness of farewell, 

When I embark. 

For tho' from out this bourne of time and place 

The flood may bear me far, 
I hope to see my Pilot face to face 

When I have crossed the bar.'* 



DEC 22 1907 



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